


i will be a gun (and it's you i'll come for)

by tacosandflowers



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Post-Canon, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacosandflowers/pseuds/tacosandflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke takes off her Grounder paint and braids, and Bellamy helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will be a gun (and it's you i'll come for)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure what this is, other than a drabble-y thing written as I ponder various S3 spoilers that have come to light lately. Originally posted on Tumblr. Title from CHVRCHES.

They’ve been running through the forest for almost two days when they finally get to the drop ship, of all places. Back where it all began.  
  
Bellamy had known they would end up here, after it became clear which direction they were heading. They need shelter, a place to rest and recover after the fallout in Polis that they’d somehow managed to escape. They need a place to think and make a plan, and they haven’t said it out loud but they both know Camp Jaha isn’t an option.  
  
“I didn’t expect to see this place again any time soon,” Clarke says quietly as she stands inside the metal hull, looking around. It’s dark and chilly, the rainy daylight fading quickly, but the shadows reveal enough of their former home that they can see where they’re going.  
  
“So you were planning on staying in Polis for a while then,” he says.  
  


She turns and meets his eyes. The paint on her face, dark and smoky around her eyes, had faded during their escape through the woods. But enough lingers that, with her elaborately braided hair, she still looks like a haunted Grounder warrior.

“I was planning on being wherever I could gather the most information to help everyone,” she replies. “But I’ve already told you that.”

She has already told him that. They haven’t talked much since fleeing Polis together, focusing mostly on moving quickly and surviving, but they’ve said enough for Clarke to know that he’s bitter. Which is fine with him. She should know.

“We need a fire,” he says, changing the subject. Now that they’re here, and have stopped moving for the first time since they left Polis, the exhaustion is creeping up on him. They need a fire, and food in their bodies, and rest.

This involves work, and Bellamy gladly throws himself into it. He’s survived down here long enough that the labor involved in obtaining basic human comfort is second nature to him. In this place where he first had to figure it all out—where to get clean water, where to get firewood, where not to die—it feels especially fitting. If there’s anywhere that he knows how to take care of people, it’s here.

He makes the fire by the door so they can benefit from the heat without filling their shelter with smoke, and Clarke finds an old metal container on the second floor to carry water. She knows how to take care of people here too, and soon she has mined both of their packs for food and prepared most of what they have left in a meager feast.

“We should hunt tomorrow,” she says after they eat. “We’re low on food. I couldn’t grab much before we left and you didn’t bring much with you.”

“I didn’t want to pack heavy for a recon mission,” he replies. “You never know how quickly you’ll have to move to avoid being a casualty in Grounder civil war.”

“Do you think they’re looking for you?” she asks as she begins to competently lash three sticks together in a tripod.

“The Sky people or the Grounders we escaped from? Because if the Grounders are looking, it’s for you, too.” he asks.

She shrugs and positions the tripod over the fire, using it to suspend the water container. “The Grounders have bigger things to worry about right now than finding us,” she replies.

He watches her as she bites her lip and looks at her set-up, making sure it’s stable. She’s powerful and practical as ever.

“You sure about that, _wanheda_?” he asks quietly.   

Her blue eyes flick to his and in the light of the flames he can see that the dark circles under them match the shade of the faded paint.

“Don’t call me that,” she says, her expression unreadable and her voice low. This sends his mind back to when they still lived here and she would make a face when he called her “princess,” back when she wore her heart on her sleeve.

“You let them call you that,” he replies. “I spent enough time lurking around Polis to figure that out.”

“I had to,” she explains. “They respect me because of what we did and I had to use that to gain access, and some of them started calling me that. But it’s not—I know you’re mad at me, but that’s not who I am.”

He’d said it to inflict pain, and it had worked, but now he feels bad because after being with her again for a few days, he knows that no matter how angry or bitter he is towards Clarke, he still cares about her.

“You don’t think they’ll mind that you’re gone?” he asks, ignoring her comment about him being mad.

“Not enough to deal with it immediately,” she says. “They’ll be coping with the casualties, the retaliation… I was really just there as a pawn, anyway, or that’s what they thought, I guess. The fight between Lexa and Nia goes back way before we were ever in the picture.”

“If that means we have time to take a breather here, then we should,” Bellamy says. “They won’t come looking from Camp Jaha. Kane knows I’m gone. Your mom wasn’t going to sanction anything, but he knew we needed to know where things stood, so he looked the other way when I left.”

“So we have time,” she says. “That’s good, because I have no idea what we’re going to do next.”

“If there’s anything I’ve learned on Earth, it’s that we never have an actual, solid idea of what we’re going to do next,” Bellamy says.

Clarke actually smiles at that, and the flash of her teeth startles him, because everything has been somber and serious and all about survival, with no cause for smiling. His gloomy pronouncement doesn’t seem to be much of a cause, either, but they are exhausted, so perhaps the point of delirium has been reached.

“It’s true,” she says, turning to rummage through her pack until she pulls out a cloth. “That doesn’t make me any less anxious about figuring it all out,” she continues, her smile fading. “But it’s nice to have a moment to stop.”

“We can deal with it tomorrow,” he says. “We’re too beat to think clearly right now anyway.”

Bellamy’s not sure the exact moment when it became _we_ again, because over the past few months with her gone, he’s gotten used to doing this all alone. And when he saw her again in Polis, he’d sworn to himself that he could continue to do this alone, because based Clarke’s Grounder-like appearance, he was going to have to.

But then they’d ended up relying on each other to survive again and here they are now, in a place they used to know, doing something they used to do—figuring it out together.

Clarke dips the cloth into the steaming water and shakes it around before wringing it out and bringing it up to her face. She sighs as she begins to clean away the remaining paint along with the dirt and grime.

“I’ve been dying to get this stuff off,” she says. “Plus I feel like I’m covered in forest.”

Bellamy watches her face as she scrubs it until only all that remains are the circles under her eyes and her scars, some of which are new since he last saw her. She’s been through so much since then, as has he, and they haven’t really talked about it yet. He thinks they’re too tired to really begin tonight, but it’s coming. He knows it is.

“I recommend this,” she says, rinsing out the rag before dipping it back into the heated water and then handing it to him.

She’s right, he thinks, as he, too, sighs when he brings the warm fabric to his face. He cleans away the grit, and there’s dried blood to be dealt with, and he’s amazed at how something as simple as washing one’s face can feel so renewing.

When he opens his eyes, Clarke has begun tackling her hair, a complicated nest of braids that has gotten increasingly tangled over the last few days. She is trying to manipulate some strands at the back of her head with little success, and when she pulls one hand away she’s holding a leaf.

“I wasn’t kidding about being covered in forest,” she says.

“Are you trying to take your braids out?” he asks.

She nods. “This is probably the only chance I’ll get for a while.”

She puts her hands back up and continues her attempt at detangling, but she keeps fumbling. He moves around until he’s behind her and can assess the knotted braids, because he figures it’s easier for him to do it than for Clarke to struggle with it. He’s about to reach for a braid when he pauses.

“Do you want some help?” he asks, feeling the need, suddenly, to get her permission to touch her. “I can see it better.”

“Um, sure,” she says quietly.

He gets to work, his fingers teasing their way through the strands to find where her hair has been tied, where the origins of her braids actually are, and slowly begins the unraveling process. He knows how to do this from years of dealing with Octavia’s hair, but with Clarke it feels strangely intimate, closer than he’s ready to be with her, but she also needs his help, and he can’t say he doesn’t mind the human contact, either.

It takes a while, because the braiding is intricate, and there are a lot of smaller braids hiding in places, and the tangles make it all extra complicated to undo. But he manages to do the best he can, and soon he can run his fingers through her hair fairly freely as he loosens the last of the braid on the crown of her head. He thinks he feels her shiver when his fingers graze her scalp as he undoes the last of it.

“There,” he says, moving away again as soon as he can before she feels him shiver too.

Clarke stands so she can bend over and shake it out, running her fingers through her freed locks. When she straightens again, her hair settles around her in a cloud, and she looks tired, and young. She’s still so young, in spite of everything she’s seen and done.  

“Thanks,” she says, giving him another small smile. “Do you mind if I use the rest of the warm water to rinse it out?”

“Go for it,” he replies, pulling his gaze away.

He rearranges things in his pack as she does this, and she sighs again as the water hits her skin, and then holds her head towards the fire so she can dry her hair. It’s a strangely domestic moment, the normalcy of it approximating a rhythm they used to know well. How she can feel so foreign and so familiar to him all at once is beyond baffling, but that’s what it is.

He volunteers to take the first watch and gives Clarke a small blanket from his pack. She manages to make a relatively comfortable place to lie down on the floor of the drop ship where the warmth of the fire can still reach her, while he leans against the edge of the door where he can see out into the dark woods.

“We’ll figure something out, right?” she asks. He looks over to where she’s curled up in the blanket, her face bathed in firelight. Her hair has begun to dry into its natural waves again, resting against her cheek.

“We always figure something out,” he says. “We have to.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, her body relaxing slightly. “Wake me up in a few hours,” she says, and then her breath begins to even out.

He watches her fall asleep. He’s not sure what they’ll figure out, but he knows it will be something. It’ll probably be hard and terrifying, like everything they’ve ever done together, but they’ll do it, and if they’re lucky, they’ll survive it. There is so much left unsaid between them, and working through that is another massive challenge they have to face.

He doesn’t know what will happen next. So he’s grateful to have this one night to rest, to take a breath and get their bearings again. As he continues to move his eyes between Clarke’s sleeping form and the forest around them, he knows one thing remains true. It’s something he’s known since the early days here at the drop ship, and still knows even after months apart. No matter what’s between them, they still have to cling to each other for faith, if they want to have any faith at all.


End file.
